Mother who opposes war concerned, proud of her son fighting in Iraq

Celia Novak doesn’t talk about her son. She doesn’t think about him. She does not mention his name.

The Greeley mom just tries to imagine that she doesn’t have a son.

But she does, and he is a U.S. Marine going to the war.

Her son, Miguel ngel Valenzuela, 19, was deployed to Iraq from Japan a week ago.

With President George Bush’s announcement that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be sent to Iraq, Novak’s life was broken into pieces. Sobbing, she said she still had hopes they will be brought home.

“I don’t see any sense in what they’re doing, or the lives that had been lost… I don’t see any benefit for this country. I thought it was a nonsense from the very beginning,” Novak said. And she is not alone.

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Two out of every three Latinos now believes that U.S. troops should be brought home from Iraq as soon as possible, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

“Hispanics favor troop withdrawals even more strongly than does the general public,” said the report, published in January.

And Native-born Latinos, who used to be more supportive of the war than their foreign-born counterparts, are now almost just as adamant about bringing the troops home.

Adam Gonzles, 21, a UNC student born in the U.S., said the government should pull people back because the country is not accomplishing anything.

“I don’t think that the U.S. should be involved anymore,” Gonzles said. “It seems like we are trying to enforce our views and government on them.”

Now 66 percent of Latinos favor bringing the troops home, up from 51 percent in January 2005.

The general public also is more inclined to bring the troops home, but not to the same extent as Latinos. A survey of the general population by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in December 2006 found that one in two Americans (50 percent) favored bringing the troops home as soon as possible, up from the 41 percent in January 2005.

With a Congress dominated by Democrats for the first time in almost 12 years, several Republican politicians have joined forces with their counterparts to sign resolutions opposing the plan to send more soldiers to Iraq.

But in his annual State of the Union address, Bush didn’t give up his policy on Iraq and said the war was the most important battle against Islamic extremists.

“Our country is looking for a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work,” the President asked.

“I just feel that the terrorism is just an excuse to see who holds more power, but we’re the ones paying for it,” Novak said. “Those young men are thinking they’re saving the United States from a catastrophe, but that’s not true.”

Novak said on one side, she is happy for her son, who joined the Marines before graduating from high school, is making a career in something he likes. But on the other, she truly believes the U.S. is not considering the Latino families for the sacrifice they’re doing by sending their sons to the war.

“I’m not against him being a Marine,” she said, “but it’s just that I’m not happy with what we’re are receiving in return for the heroic sacrifices our kids are doing there.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.

U.S. death toll

As of Sunday, 3,122 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq since March 2003